“There is an important movement on foot among us Westerners,” I said,
“in regard to a recommendation to the convention that the bottles
containing the tartrate of antimony and potash, and the tartrate of
sodium and potash be kept in a contiguous position on the shelf.”
“Gentleman to three-fourteen,” said the clerk, hastily. I was whisked
away to my room.
The next day I bought a trunk and clothing, and began to live the life
of Edward Pinkhammer. I did not tax my brain with endeavors to solve
problems of the past.
It was a piquant and sparkling cup that the great island city held up
to my lips. I drank of it gratefully. The keys of Manhattan belong to
him who is able to bear them. You must be either the city’s guest or
its victim.
The following few days were as gold and silver. Edward Pinkhammer, yet
counting back to his birth by hours only, knew the rare joy of having
come upon so diverting a world full-fledged and unrestrained. I sat
entranced on the magic carpets provided in theatres and roof-gardens,
that transported one into strange and delightful lands full of
frolicsome music, pretty girls and grotesque drolly extravagant
parodies upon human kind. I went here and there at my own dear will,
bound by no limits of space, time or comportment. I dined in weird
cabarets, at weirder _tables d’hôte_ to the sound of Hungarian music
and the wild shouts of mercurial artists and sculptors. Or, again,
where the night life quivers in the electric glare like a kinetoscopic
picture, and the millinery of the world, and its jewels, and the ones
whom they adorn, and the men who make all three possible are met for
good cheer and the spectacular effect. And among all these scenes that
I have mentioned I learned one thing that I never knew before. And that
is that the key to liberty is not in the hands of License, but
Convention holds it. Comity has a toll-gate at which you must pay, or
you may not enter the land of Freedom. In all the glitter, the seeming
disorder, the parade, the abandon, I saw this law, unobtrusive, yet
like iron, prevail. Therefore, in Manhattan you must obey these
unwritten laws, and then you will be freest of the free. If you decline
to be bound by them, you put on shackles.
Sometimes, as my mood urged me, I would seek the stately, softly
murmuring palm rooms, redolent with high-born life and delicate
restraint, in which to dine. Again I would go down to the waterways in
steamers packed with vociferous, bedecked, unchecked love-making clerks
and shop-girls to their crude pleasures on the island shores. And there
was always Broadway—glistening, opulent, wily, varying, desirable
Broadway—growing upon one like an opium habit.
One afternoon as I entered my hotel a stout man with a big nose and a
black mustache blocked my way in the corridor. When I would have passed
around him, he greet me with offensive familiarity.
“Hello, Bellford!” he cried, loudly. “What the deuce are you doing in
New York? Didn’t know anything could drag you away from that old book
den of yours. Is Mrs. B. along or is this a little business run alone,
eh?”
“You have made a mistake, sir,” I said, coldly, releasing my hand from
his grasp. “My name is Pinkhammer. You will excuse me.”
The man dropped to one side, apparently astonished. As I walked to the
clerk’s desk I heard him call to a bell boy and say something about
telegraph blanks.
“You will give me my bill,” I said to the clerk, “and have my baggage
brought down in half an hour. I do not care to remain where I am
annoyed by confidence men.”
I moved that afternoon to another hotel, a sedate, old-fashioned one on
lower Fifth Avenue.
There was a restaurant a little way off Broadway where one could be
served almost _al fresco_ in a tropic array of screening flora. Quiet
and luxury and a perfect service made it an ideal place in which to
take luncheon or refreshment. One afternoon I was there picking my way
to a table among the ferns when I felt my sleeve caught.
“Mr. Bellford!” exclaimed an amazingly sweet voice.
I turned quickly to see a lady seated alone—a lady of about thirty,
with exceedingly handsome eyes, who looked at me as though I had been
her very dear friend.
“You were about to pass me,” she said, accusingly. “Don’t tell me you
do not know me. Why should we not shake hands—at least once in fifteen
years?”
I shook hands with her at once. I took a chair opposite her at the
table. I summoned with my eyebrows a hovering waiter. The lady was
philandering with an orange ice. I ordered a _crème de menthe_. Her
hair was reddish bronze. You could not look at it, because you could
not look away from her eyes. But you were conscious of it as you are
conscious of sunset while you look into the profundities of a wood at
twilight.
“Are you sure you know me?” I asked.
“No,” she said, smiling. “I was never sure of that.”
“What would you think,” I said, a little anxiously, “if I were to tell
you that my name is Edward Pinkhammer, from Cornopolis, Kansas?”
“What would I think?” she repeated, with a merry glance. “Why, that you
had not brought Mrs. Bellford to New York with you, of course. I do
wish you had. I would have liked to see Marian.” Her voice lowered
slightly—“You haven’t changed much, Elwyn.”